Jonathan Chait at TNR:
By sheer luck, I think I picked a fairly good time to go on vacation. Mainly what I missed is a bout of hysteria and elected Democrats coming around to the obvious. Last Wednesday, in the wake of the Coakley fiasco, I predicted that health care reform remained a better-than-even bet:
Here is what I think will happen. The shock and panic will play itself out over a few days. Then the Democrats will assess the situation and realize that letting health care die represents their worst possible option. And then they will make a deal to pass the Senate bill through the House. I am not positive this will happen, but it’s my bet, because elected officials at the national level, dim though they can be, are usually shrewd enough to recognize their political self-interest.
That seems to be how it’s playing out. First, you had a big freakout. Then the national media declared reform dead. But the more perceptive reporters can see that the basic structural dynamics favoring a deal remain as strong as ever.
Karen Tumulty at Swampland at Time:
After looking at all their other options–drafting a smaller health care bill, or passing the most popular parts piecemeal–Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have come down to the realization that they’ve got one play left on health care: Get the House to pass the Senate bill, with the assurance of a set of revisions to be included in a companion measure passed under the budget reconciliation process, to circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote majority requirement.
The key word here is “assurance.” And right now, it is far from clear how nervous House members could get the guarantees they need.
That is likely to be the main issue when House Democrats caucus tonight at 7 p.m. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last week, there is simply no way she can find the votes to pass the Senate bill as is. But her members might, if they knew that there would be some fixes. Among those changes: They don’t want the Senate bill’s “Cadillac tax” on high-priced insurance policies; they want the bill stripped of sweetheart deals like Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback;” they would like a national health insurance exchange, not the state ones in the Senate bill.
The only way to get any of those through the Senate is by the use of the reconciliation process. So the thinking now is to come up with what one top aide to the House Democratic leadership describes as “simultaneous tracks” for the Senate bill and the companion reconciliation bill.
Brian Beutler at TPM:
Leading Democrats in the House still insist that “all options are on the table” to move ahead on health care. But for the first time since last Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts, it’s clear that they’re coalescing around the most widely discussed option: moving ahead with the Senate bill once it’s clear that it will be changed through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process. Before they can move ahead, they need the Senate to make some real headway on their end of the bargain–and they’re not getting the signs they need.
“I thought we could get the votes in the House to pass the [Senate] bill if fixes to the Senate bill can be done,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) told reporters today.
“That would be a good option as far as I’m concerned,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), leader of the House progressives’ health care task force. “I could support it. Reconciliation. Majority rule.”
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA)–one of the key architect’s of the House health care bill–gives it the high sign. “I think reconciliation’s an appropriate way to proceed on reconciling the budget requirements,” he said. “It’s available to us. That was very specifically handled that way when we passed the budget.”
The hang up, they now say, is not on their end, but that they first need a high sign from the Senate that the two chambers can work in lockstep.
Matthew Yglesias, responding to Beutler:
Excellent work, all around.
Unfortunately, the always troublesome “centrist” Democratic Senators seem prepared to resume their customary role as the villains whose consistently egomaniacal and self-destructive behavior has badly damaged the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans, rendered the president ineffective, and landed themselves and their copartisans in a bucket of electoral hot water. Now a whole passel of them—Landrieu, Bayh, Lincoln, Lieberman, Pryor, Begich, Nelson, McCaskill—have expressed varying levels of unease with the idea. They really need to get over it.This amounts to voting “yes” a second time on something they’ve already voted for. The downside is already baked into the cake, and getting something done offers the chance to try to defend their work and go on offense.
Jonathan Chait at TNR, again, responding to Yglesias:
The Senate’s general lack of urgency troubles me. But the reservations of the moderates don’t. Of the names Yglesias cites, not all have ruled out voting for reconciliation — many have only expressed skepticism, of the sort they were expressing last fall before ultimately holding together to break a filibuster. More important, even if all those Senators defected, there are only eight of them, leaving enough Democrats to pass the bill. Since the party can afford nine defections, and the moderate wing needs to show some independence, they have every reason to express their reservations or even vote no.
One point they may want to consider, though, is that one important change in the reconciliation bill will be eliminating the special Nebraska subsidy. That’s become the biggest target in the bill. Democrats have good reason to go on record in favor eliminating it, and they have a very strong incentive to enact a law that cancels it out.
But can Harry Reid deliver? Conference negotiations were far enough along before the Masschusetts meltdown that it seems as if coming to an agreement shouldn’t be all that hard. Keep your fingers crossed. And call your senator to encourage them to get on board.
Oh — and it would be nice if Obama chimed in on this too. And if he does, it would be even nicer if the Democratic caucus in Congress were willing to treat him as the leader of the party and actually listen to him.
Indeed, several knowledgeable sources have told me that pro-reform calls to the House have helped stiffen spines — a week ago, 218 appeared impossible; now it appears doable — but it’s the overly-cautious, risk-averse Senate that needs to receive public pressure. The upper chamber has become so terrified, it’s apparently reluctant to do or say much of anything — so much so at yesterday’s caucus meeting, senators literally didn’t mention health care at all.
Over the last few days, every relevant player has come to realize that there are two real choices: (1) failure; or (2) House passes the Senate bill, Senate agrees to some minor changes. If you’d pressed me last week, I would have said there’s a 5% chance this is going to work out. Now, I’d put the number at maybe 20%, higher if the White House starts trying to make this happen.
The odds are long, and the smart money is still on failure, but I’m not jumping out the window yet.
Pass. The. Damn. Bill.
The White House press team is blasting out speeches where the president says he’ll never stop fighting on health care but pointedly refuses to throw a punch. The president is giving interviews where he seems to endorse paring the bill back and also seems to argue against doing anything of the kind. The daily message has run from banks to freezes, and early leaks suggest that tonight’s speech will focus on education.
According to multiple sources, there’s an easy answer for the confusion: The White House is confused. Some in the president’s inner circle, including Rahm Emanuel, want the bill pared back. Something is better than nothing, they say, and if Congress doesn’t have the votes for the full bill, the White House can’t be left fighting a losing battle. Others argue that the White House’s refusal to lead is a self-fulfilling prophecy, killing a bill that’s comprehensive enough to work and close enough to pass while pinning hopes to an unknown compromise bill that probably won’t work and almost certainly won’t get the liberal Democrats or moderate Republicans necessary for passage.
The wild card in all of this is Obama himself. And the hope of many reformers is that the White House will play that card in tonight’s State of the Union. But as of last night, the language of the speech wasn’t finished, and no one seemed certain of where the president would finally come down.
Depending on what they think will happen, observers bring up two well-worn narratives from the campaign. The first is Obama’s tendency to patiently let the fury of the news cycle abate before attempting to change its direction. You saw this in the months before Iowa, they say, where a listless campaign recaptured its spark with Obama’s tremendous speech at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner. You saw it in the Summer of 2008, when John McCain and Sarah Palin seemed to be surging, and Obama was holding his money and negative firepower in reserve. You saw it in August, when Obama let the townhalls play out and Congress return to session before giving his first national address on health care.
Pessimists, however, point to a very different narrative. Obama, they say, has not shown himself a fighter for his policy commitments. His time as a national figure was short, adulatory and unmarred by hard causes or lonely battles. During the primary campaign, he was battered by John Edwards and Hillary Clinton on social policy, surviving mainly on the strength of his personal narrative and his opposition to the war in Iraq. His strategy on health care was to compromise with industry, compromise with Congress, and seek the path of maximal consensus, which has resulted in an ugly bill that doesn’t excite supporters and doesn’t comfort voters. This is all, they say, part of a pattern of conflict-aversion that the president’s supporters have refused to acknowledge.
But everyone agrees on one thing: Tonight’s speech is the most important of his young presidency, and it will be the most revealing of his career. Does he stand and fight for a health-care bill he believes to be a historic and necessary step forward? Or does he back away from it, letting some gestures toward his commitment to the issue stand in for the determined leadership — and the political gamble — that would represent real commitment to the issue?
The White House might be unsure about what to do about their signature piece of legislation, but that hasn’t stopped them from whipping senators on Bernanke.
Priorities.
Until now I have resisted siccing you guys on the White House for reasons that mostly have to do with how the Executive branch is (and should be) institutionally protected from swings in popular opinion. Still, Obama’s talk tonight may decide the game. If the President says PTDB then the damn bill gets passed and our job narrows down to pressuring the Senate to pass a fix, which I think we can do as long as step (1) gets done. If the President asks us to pare down our expectations, then the ballgame’s over.
Imagine for a second that Olympia Snowe does come up with some compromise that will not get her thrown out of her caucus. Needless to say it will take her three or four months to make up her mind, assuming (to the point of idiotic gullibility) that she doesn’t pull a Lieberman and back out on her own deal. So that puts us at the height of campaign season. Granting that liberal Senators can choke down an even worse bill, which I doubt they will do, do you suppose that the House liberal caucus will turn around and support a shit-and-banana sandwich after the banana gets taken out? Get real.
The White House switchboard is 202-456-1414. Call and give them your mind.
